Teaching is a skill and an art which has developed and evolved through the ages. Generally, within an education system, there are teachers who present, teach and test students on course materials, students who receive and learn course material and who are subsequently tested, authors who prepare and organize course material and administrators who control and direct the interaction between authors, teachers and students.
In the past, an author would prepare course material, normally in the form of a textbook containing printed information. An administrator would receive and distribute the textbook to teachers, the teachers would teach material within the textbook to students, prepare and administer exams to the students and students would study the course material and take exams set by the teachers.
In the past, authors may include questions relating to sections of text to assist teachers in teaching the course and setting exams for the course. Alternatively, teachers would prepare questions relating to the textbook for study purposes or for setting exams wherein a student could use these questions as a component in the process of studying and learning a course.
However, the processes of authoring, teaching and learning have hereto before not been unified. In the past, while questions which have been prepared by an author or teacher can be used by a student to study progress in a course, these questions cannot be efficiently used by a student to facilitate-assessment of learning. Specifically, therefore, there has been a need for a system wherein a textbook contains both questions and answers relating to a course and where those questions and answers are linked to specific sections of the text of a course to create a library of questions, answers and links for a specific text. Such as system advantageously provides a teacher the ability to teach a course wherein questions relevant to the course are immediately and efficiently available to the teacher for setting homework or exams, and to the student for studying a course or for taking exams. The efficient linkages between the author of a course, the teacher of a course and the students taking the course also provides an efficient system for evaluation of the learning process through the ability to track the progress of a student in learning the material of a course.
Accordingly, there has been a need for an evaluation based, computer aided, authoring, teaching and learning system to enhance the ability of authors, teachers and students to prepare, teach and learn course material.
For authors, there has been a need for a system having a text editor that can be used to set up a multi-media (print, graphics, audio and video), multi-levelled textbook. In addition, there has been a need for a system which enables the development of an evaluation system by the author wherein a library of questions/answers can be developed covering the content of the textbook wherein the questions/answers are individually linked to specific components of the textbook. Upon the development of such a course, there has been a need for a system wherein the course can be easily distributed to teachers, administrators and students for use on computer systems.
For students, there has been a need for a system which enables the student to study the textbook and then set-up and take a self-examination test on the textbook, wherein upon completion of the test, the system will immediately mark the test, provide the test score and provide the student with the ability to review the test results with a link to the textbook showing the section of the textbook containing information in the context of the correct answer.
Furthermore, there has been a need for a system wherein statistics relating to the student's performance on particular sections of the textbook can be readily obtained and analysed to provide information respecting the progress of the student for both sections of or the entire course, thus allowing students to progress at their own pace with a quantitative assessment of their progress.
For teachers, there has been a need for a system enabling exams to be efficiently set-up, distributed and marked with the added ability to obtain reports respecting both individual and class progress. Still further, there has been a need for a system giving teachers the ability to identify individuals or students who are having difficulty with a particular area wherein clarification can be offered to those students without holding back other students thereby enabling the education process to be individualized.
In addition, there has been a need for a system wherein the course may contain multi-levelled elements to facilitate learning. More specifically, there has been a need for a system wherein an author may produce a textbook including, for example, a general outline which may be used for more generalized study, a precis introducing concepts and ideas in greater detail and a full-text version for in-depth study each with associated questions/answers and links.
For administrators, there has been a need for a system which allows for the efficient set-up and distribution of computer textbook courses over computer systems and the subsequent collection and processing of information pertaining to the use of the system.
A review of the prior art has indicated that such a system has not been developed. U.S. Pat. No. 4,798,543 (issued Jan. 17, 1989) is directed to an interactive training method and system for the selective presentation of audio and video training program information to learner operators. This patent describes a system which includes text/video/audio display of information and a system that enables an instructor to evaluate the progress of a student.
Other patents include U.S. Pat. No. 4,968,257 (issued Nov. 6, 1989) describing a computer based teaching apparatus which includes a specific apparatus and joystick for interfacing with a user; U.S. Pat. No. 5,002,491 (issued Mar. 26, 1991) describing an interactive classroom system enabling teachers to administer and evaluate tests over a computer system; U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,520 (issued Jan. 5, 1993) describing a computer assisted instructional delivery system and method enabling both a teacher and student to share work space around a classroom over a computer network with specific hardware; U.S. Pat. No. 5,372,507 (issued Dec. 13, 1994) describing a machine aided tutorial method; U.S. Pat. No. 5,441,415 (issued Aug. 15, 1995) describing a computer aided learning method and apparatus; U.S. Pat. No. 5,577,919 (issued Nov. 26, 1996) describing a method and apparatus for automated learning and performance evaluation; U.S. Pat. No. 5,318,450 (issued Jun. 7, 1994) describing a multi-media distribution system for instructional materials; and, U.S. Pat. No. 5,437,555 (issued Aug. 1, 1995) describing a remote teaching system.